It certainly conveys the impression that she was a woman who did not easily forego her rights. That which is most to her honour of her recorded acts is the refounding and endowment by her of Queens' College, Cambridge, which her rival, Margaret of Anjou, had founded before her. There is a portrait of her in the hall of this college, which is engraved in Miss Strickland's 'Queens of England.'
[Dugdale's Baronage; Fabyan's Chronicle; Paston Letters; History of the Arrival of Edward IV (Camden Soc.); Warkworth's Chronicle (Camd. Soc.); Polydore Vergil; Hall's Chronicle (ed. 1869); Will. Wyrcester, in Stevenson's Wars of the English in France (Rolls Ser.); Collections of a London Citizen and Three Fifteenth-century Chronicles (Camden Soc.); Archælogia Cantiana, i. 147-9; Campbells Materials for a History of Henry VII (Rolls Ser.); Arundel MS. 26, f. 29 l (Brit. Mus,); Royal Wills, 350; Miss Stricklans's Lives of the Queens of England, vol. ii.]
ELIZABETH, queen of Henry VII (1465–1503), of York, the eldest child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, his queen, was born at Westminster Palace on 11 Feb. 1465. She was baptised in the abbey with much pomp, and had for sponsors her grandmother, the Duchess of York, the Duchess of Bedford, and Warwick, the kingmaker. In 1467 the manor of Great Lynford; in Buckinghamshire was granted to her for life, and shortly afterwards 400l. a year was assigned to the queen for the expenses of the princesses Elizabeth and Mary. In 1469 Edward arranged that she should marry George Nevill, whom he created Duke of Bedford; but as the bridegroom's father, the Marquis of Montague, turned, like the other Nevills, against the king, the match was set aside, and in 1477 the Duke of Bedford was degraded. In 1475, when Edward was on the point of invading France, he made his will, in which he assigned to his two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, ten thousand marks each for their marriages, on condition that they allowed themselves to be guided in making them by their mother the queen and by the prince when he came to years of discretion. But only two months later Edward made peace with France, with an express condition that Elizabeth should be married to the dauphin as soon as the parties were of suitable age. In 1478 her dowry was settled, and it was agreed that on her marriage the expenses of conveying her to France should be paid by Louis XI. In 1480, she being then in her sixteenth year, Edward sent Lord Howard and Dr. Langton to France to make further arrangements; but Louis had other objects in view and had no intention of completing the marriage.
Another match is said to have been proposed for Elizabeth at one time, and even urged rather strongly by her father, that is with Henry, earl of Richmond. But the truth appears to be that the earl being then a refugee in Brittany, Edward was very anxious to get him into his hands, and nearly succeeded in persuading the Duke of Brittany to deliver him up, pretending that he had no wish to keep him in prison, but rather to marry him to his own daughter. The suggestion certainly was not made in good faith, for Edward had already engaged his daughter to the dauphin; but the match suggested was probably thought of by some even at this early period as a desirable mode of uniting the claims of Lancaster and York. After the death of Edward IV in April 1483, his widow, with her five daughters and her second son Richard, threw himself into the sanctuary of Westminster, in fear her brother-in-law, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who, however, being declared protector, actually induced her to give up her second son to keep company with his brother Edward V. Soon after the two princes disappeared, and there is no reason to doubt were murdered,
In October occurred the Duke of Buckingham's rebellion against Richard III, which was planned in concert with the Countess of Richmond, and which if successful would have made the earl, her son, king two years before he actually came to the throne. It was agreed among the confederates that the earl should marry Elizabeth, who was now, by the death of both her brothers, heiress of Edward IV. Even before the murder took place a project seems to have been entertained of getting her or some of her sisters out of sanctuary in disguise and carried beyond sea for security. But Richard surrounded the monastery with a guard under one John Nesfield, so that no one could enter or leave the sanctuary without permission, and Queen Elizabeth and her daughters remained in confinement for fully ten months without much hope of more comfortable quarters. Meanwhile Richard had called a parliament which confirmed his title to the crown by declaring the whole issue of his brother Edward IV to be bastards. But on 1 March 1484 he gave the ladies a written promise that if they would come out of sanctuary and be guided by him they should not only be sure of their lives and persons, but he would make suitable provision for their living and marry the daughters to 'gentlemen born,' giving each of them landed property to the yearly value of two hundred marks. The lords
